Gay Talese Reader

As a young reporter for The New York Times, in 1961 Gay Talese published his first book, New York-A Serendipiter''s Journey, a series of vignettes and essays that began, "New York is a city of things unnoticed. It is a city with cats sleeping under parked cars, two stone armadillos crawling up St. Patrick''s Cathedral, and thousands of ants creeping on top of the Empire State Building."

Attention t...